Blackhacker

It is finally safe to spend that 6 or 7 HUNDRED dollars for that HD player, and not worry that you will get stuck with a highly sophisticated door stop.

Toshiba pulls plug on HD DVD format
Toshiba has told the market that it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.

This effectively ends the high definition DVD format war and leaves the market clear for Sony’s Blu-ray high definition DVD format which has steadily been gaining ground ahead of HD DVD in the market.

About 2 decades after Sony lost the VHS vs Betamax war, they win with Blu-ray Disc. The company I suppose was do for a break, because the 21st century really hasn’t been that kind to Japan’s premiere electronics company. Soring competition, loss of market share, and some REALLY bad management decisions, has hurt the company, not to mention the fact that Sony products have not been as good as they once where.

Well kudos to you Sony. You have about 10 maybe 15 years to be on top. By then entertainment media distributed as atoms in stores will probably be a thing of the past. It does have promise as a storage medium. Until then we will all have to pay “tribute” to Sony, for every blu-ray product we buy. All hail Sony !!!

Sony Joins Other Labels on Amazon MP3 Store - New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — Sony BMG, the music company, announced Thursday that it would become the fourth and final major label to begin selling digital music on Amazon.com, offering its entire catalog in the MP3 format by the end of the month.

We are apparently hearing the death nell of the scourge of fair use, DRM.

Apples got some worries, because this make Amazon the largest legitimate music down load site, in terms of catalog.

Dap: /.

1. Batteries that ignite
2. rootkit CDs
3. Blue-Ray Falling behind HD-DVD.
4. The delay of PS3
5. Add to that the Nintendo Wii, is handing them their hind quarters, after removing it from their sneaker, in their own back yard

BetaNews | PS3 Falls Further Behind in Japan
apanese gaming magazine company Enterbrain said that the PS3 had only managed to sell 45,321 units in May, far less than the Wii’s 251,794 units during the month of May, a five-to-one margin. In April, the Wii was outselling the PS3 by a four-to-one ratio.

emphases mine

Spidey 3 Trailer
Dap:Google Blogscoped

Rootkit class action settled: time to submit your claim
Engadget

PS3: Holy Grail for Alternative Operating Systems? - OSNews.com
Sony’s PS3, scheduled to be released near the end of this year, has been slated to have a hard drive that will support and will even include preinstalled Linux. This could be a breakthrough event not just for Linux but also for other alternative operating systems as well. The PS3 will almost certainly sell millions and millions of units, providing a unique opportunity for people to try something that would be more difficult on their regular computer.

EFF Urges Consumers to Claim Clean CDs and Extra Downloads

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging music fans who purchased Sony BMG music CDs containing flawed digital rights management (DRM) to submit their claims now for clean CDs and extra downloads as part of a class action lawsuit settlement.

“This settlement gives consumers what they thought they were buying in the first place — clean, safe music that will play on their computers and their iPods as well as their stereo systems,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl.

Anyone who purchased Sony BMG CDs that included First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software can receive the same music without DRM. Some will also get downloads of other Sony BMG music from several different services, including iTunes. Music fans have through the end of the year to participate in the settlement, and they should receive their compensation within six to eight weeks of submitting their claim forms. Customers can find out more about the settlement and how to submit their claims at http://www.eff.org/sony.
(link)

BetaNews | Oops — New Sony DRM Patch Insecure
Oops — New Sony DRM Patch Insecure
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
December 8, 2005, 11:40 AM

Just one day after jointly announcing a patch to correct a security flaw in the SunnComm MediaMax copy protection included on 27 CDs, Sony BMG and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are urging users not to install it. The update includes a vulnerability similar to the one it attempted to fix.

SunnComm’s MediaMax version 5 software does not properly protect a directory it installs, opening the door for a privilege escalation attack. Thus, a restricted user account could replace the executables within the MediaMax directory with malicious code, which would then be executed by an administrator upon inserting a CD.

Sony introduced a DRM technology that automatically installs on you PC, called XCP. The idea was that it would interject an keep you from ripping the CDs. It is installed when you try to play a CD with the software on it. Another word for this type of software is a rootkit. The story was broke by blogger and hacker Mark Russinovich No small uproar went through the Internet.

The outcry was so great that on Nov. 11, Sony announced it was temporarily halting production of that copy-protection scheme. That still wasn’t enough — on Nov. 14 the company announced it was pulling copy-protected CDs from store shelves and offered to replace customers’ infected CDs for free.

But that’s not the real story here.

It’s a tale of extreme hubris. Sony rolled out this incredibly invasive copy-protection scheme without ever publicly discussing its details, confident that its profits were worth modifying its customers’ computers. When its actions were first discovered, Sony offered a “fix” that didn’t remove the rootkit, just the cloaking. (from wired)

Not only that but it left a security vulnerability. As you may realize people play CDs EVERY FREAKING WHERE there is PC. That’s why the rootkit was found on DOD and Dept. of Homeland Security PCs. It is estimated that 1,500,000 computers world wide are infected.

What do you think of your antivirus company, the one that didn’t notice Sony’s rootkit as it infected half a million computers? And this isn’t one of those lightning-fast Internet worms; this one has been spreading since mid-2004. Because it spread through infected CDs, not through Internet connections, they didn’t notice? This is exactly the kind of thing we’re paying those companies to detect — especially because the rootkit was phoning home.

Phoning home means that the rootkit was contacting Sony though the Internet.

Lastly, it turns out that Sony’s rootkit was based on software developed by DVD Jon who’s broke Sony’s encryption and release a program on the Internet that allowed someone to rip DVDs. (link)

So to answer the the question in the title :

YOU BLACK AS &@$$ !!!

list of CDs said to have XCP:1 2 3

RootKit Revealer

Sony is going though some stuff right now, with a new CEO, and problems moving over priced AV & PC hardware. One bright spot for Sony has always been gaming aka The Sony Playstation. Sony is FINALLY going to try to extend it game console dominance into the portable area. Portable gaming has been owned for more than a decade by Nintendo and it’s Game Boy. But now Portable Sony Playstation is here .. almost here anyway. Walt Mossberg from WSJ has a review.

Next week, Sony will release in the U.S. a flashy new portable audio and video device that some believe could mark the start of a resurgence for the beleaguered Japanese electronics and entertainment giant. The $250 Playstation Portable, or PSP, already a hit in Japan, could become Sony’s first iconic portable, personal product of the digital era — Sony’s equivalent of Apple Computer’s iPod.

Mossberg found issues with the music/video playback & PC integration features. But Mossberg being outside the core demographic for his product doesn’t understand this shot across the bow of the Nintendo GBA. The other features are just value added features to justify the $250 price tag. Don’t know if it will work. We’ll see.

Update:
A more comprehensive review of the PSP is at engaget. I won’t summarize it here ’cause its way long but it might prove more useful to hard core gamers than Mossberg.